Church of England Braced for New Sex Abuse Claims

Fresh allegations of child sex abuse against the Church of England (CofE) are likely to surface, the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said he was braced for an abuse inquiry to reveal “bad stories” about the Church.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he dealt with the issue daily and that the Church needed to be transparent.

It comes after the Home Office backed Baroness Butler-Sloss as the right person to lead that inquiry.

Concerns have been raised about her over a previous review role in which she is alleged to have told an abused choirboy that she wanted to exclude some of his allegations in order to protect the CofE.

She has said she never put institutions before victims.

Archbishop Welby said abuse survivors needed to be shown justice and called for transparency from the Church in how it dealt with the issue.

Asked if he was prepared for more “bad stories” of child abuse within the establishment, the archbishop told the BBC: “I would love to say there weren’t, but I expect there are. There are in almost every institution in this land.

“This is, it’s something I deal with every day and it is becoming clearer and clearer that for many, many years things were not dealt with as they should have been dealt with.”

He added that the Church needed to apologise and explain how “utterly devastated” it was about the “terrible things” that were done in the past.